By William L. Watts and Sara Sjolin, MarketWatch
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — U.S. stock futures remained little changed on Thursday after Automatic Data Processing Inc. reported that private-sectors jobs increased by 176,000 in August.
Analysts polled by MarketWatch had expected an August gain of 185,000, compared with an originally estimated increase of 200,000 in July. On Thursday, ADP revised July’s gain to 198,000.
More U.S. economic data are due later in the morning.
Futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJU3 -0.07% fell 10 points to 14,914. S&P 500 index futures SPU3 +0.01% were nearly unchanged at 1,653, while futures for the Nasdaq 100 index NDU3 +0.10% edged up 2.50 points to 3,130.
Investors continued to track developments regarding Syria a day after the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved a resolution backing limited military action against the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. That cut into the rise by U.S. equities in Wednesday’s session.
“While the resolution itself is expected to go before the Senate mid next week, the overall Syrian situation is set to cast a shadow of today’s G-20 summit in St. Petersburg although the conflict is not formally on the summit’s agenda,” said Anthony Ip, strategist at Deutsche Bank. See: What’s next in Congress on Syria.
Investors were expected to look for clues in U.S. data releases as to whether the Federal Reserve may begin to scale back its $85-billion-a-month asset purchases in September. Fed officials have said tapering could begin later this year if data continue to improve, leaving investors scrutinizing macroeconomic figures coming out of the U.S.
Weekly jobless claims are likely to show that layoffs remain at a post-recession low. Initial claims, due at 8:30 a.m. Eastern, are forecast to fall slightly to 330,000 from 331,000 the prior week, sticking close to a more-than-five-year low. Other reports on tap include revised productivity for the second quarter at 8:30 a.m. Eastern, with factory orders for July and the ISM service-sector survey following at 10 a.m.
In the corporate sector, BlackBerry Ltd. BBRY +3.07% shares gained in premarket trade on a report that it is seeking to fast-track its sale and find a new owner by November.
European stocks traded mostly lower. The Bank of England, as expected, left its key lending rate unchanged at 0.5%, where it has stood since March 2009, and made no changes to its asset-purchase program.
The European Central Bank also kept rates on hold, with investors now awaiting the press conference of ECB President Mario Draghi, who is expected to repeat that the central bank is committed to keeping interest rates low for an extended period.
